L is for Loser

Well, Sven obviously doesn't read my blog or he'd have dropped Lampard.

The sad truth is that, despite the quality of our players and some superb individual performances (Hargreaves in the QF, A Cole in the second round), the system did not work. That's the manager's responsibility. Gerrard and Lampard hardly had the ball due to our lame-ass 'hump it up to Rooney' policy, which might have worked if he'd had someone to pass to - his control of the ball from even mediocre passes was excellent. Our superb midfield (best on paper in the tournament, by far) was thus bypassed.

The few chances we did get on the edge of the area mostly fell to Lampard, who lamped the all hard over the bar. The stats don't lie - he missed 23 times by my count. I've heard plenty of people argue that "at least he got the chances" but that's meaningless - no goals, no assists = rubbish in my book.

I really feel we blew this one - even worse than 2002 when we had an excellent chance to win in a poor field. If we'd beaten Portugal I don't think the others would have been much of a challenge. I'm gutted. The worst thing is that I can't see us having a world-class passer of the ball (Beckham), such a good defence (Cole and Ferdinand were awesome) AND Rooney all together in a team again.

Terry should NOT be captain - he was dodgy on at least a few occasions (the three chances the Swedes should have taken and didn't). Gerrard is clearly the right choice - he's won the Champions League - and it will develop him, whereas Terry will shout and lead anyway.

I can't get that optimistic about the future with McClaren in charge. I really hope he'll prove me wrong but he just isn't a big enough personality to get hold of the players and sort out the midfield system, with or without Beckham. The key is to bridge midfield and attack, and the right thing to do would have been to get the 4-5-1 to work by one midfielder (Beckham) dropping back and picking the ball off Hargreaves (like Zidane or Riquelme) and the other midfielder (Gerrard or Lampard) breaking forward to support Rooney. How many times was Hargreaves given an easy option ahead of him? How many times did Rooney break into the box with someone to cross or pass to, or drag a defender away? (I'll give you a clue - the answer rhymes with "fun").

This seems obvious to me but the problem was that Sven didn't have the balls or the personality to give proper roles to Gerrard and Lampard, and he didn't make the most of Beckham either - left on the right where his lack of pace was a real problem. The best teams use their best players properly - look at France and Portugal. Brazil went out because they had the same problem - they pulled Ronaldinho deep to bring the ball out of midfield when they should have used Kaka or someone else in that role and had Ronaldinho running at defences, not at midfielders.

Similarly, Rooney should have been able to run at defences from 10 yards out, not struggling in the box with 2 or 3 defenders on him. What a waste. Given the way we were playing, it was no surprise that Crouch looked so effective when he came on in the QF - he held the ball up and waited for support, rather than trying to get in the box and score (which is what Rooney and Lampard tried to do).

Hitting sides on the break with the killer ball only works if you have attackers with the pace to go past defenders - where was Defoe? Why wasn't Lennon given a proper chance to attack? I blame the 5-1 win in Germany - we slaughtered them on the break with Owen's pace and Beckham's passing. The problem is that without a top-form Owen or other fast striker, it just doesn't work. We've been trying to play that way ever since and it didn't work.

Anyway, see you in 2 years. I still believe.